Res Gestae

Besides all this, the roads were blocked by many who lay mortally wounded, lamenting the torment of their wounds; and with them also mounds of fallen horses filled the plains with corpses. To these ever irreparable losses, so costly to the Roman state, a night without the bright light of the moon put an end.

At the first coming of darkness the emperor, amid the common soldiers as was supposed (for no one asserted that he had seen him or been with him), fell mortally wounded by an arrow, and presently breathed his last breath; and he was never afterwards found anywhere.[*](Libanius Orat. xxiv. II, p. 515 (Foerster), agrees with this account, but adds that the emperor might have saved himself on horseback, but did not wish to survive the defeat of his army, and died fighting. The other authorities agree with the following account of Ammianus.) For since a few of the foe were active for long in the neighbourhood for the purpose of robbing the dead, no one of the fugitives or of the natives ventured to approach the spot.

The Caesar Decius, we are told, met a similar fate;[*](Cf. Zosimus, iv. 24.) for when he was fiercely fighting with the barbarians and his horse, whose excitement he could not restrain, stumbled and threw him, he fell into a marsh, from which he could not get out, nor could his body be found.

Others say that Valens did not give up the ghost at once, but with his bodyguard[*](See Index II, Vol. I.) and a few eunuchs was taken to a peasant’s cottage near by, well fortified in its second storey; and while he was being treated by unskilful hands, he was surrounded by the enemy, who did not know who he was, but was

For while the pursuers were trying to break open the bolted doors, they were assailed with arrows from a balcony of the house; and fearing through the inevitable delay to lose the opportunity for pillage, they piled bundles of straw and firewood about the house, set fire to them, and burned it men and all.

From it one of the bodyguard leaped through a window, but was taken by the enemy; when he told them what had happened, he filled them with sorrow at being cheated of great glory, in not having taken the ruler of the Roman empire alive. This same young man, having later escaped and returned secretly to our army, gave this account of what had occurred.

When Spain had been recovered, with a similar disaster the second of the Scipios,[*](I.e., Cn. Cornelius Scipio Calvus, 212 B.C. Livy, xxv. 36, 13.) we are told, was burned with a tower in which he had taken refuge and which the enemy had set on fire.[*](Cf. Livy, xxv. 36, 13; Appian, Bell. Hisp. 3, 16 (Rom. Hist. vi. 3, 16).) This much, at any rate, is certain, that neither Scipio nor Valens had the fortune of burial[*](Cf. Iliad, 456; Virg., Aen. xi. 22; Val. Max. iv. 4, 2.) which is death’s final honour.

Amid this manifold loss of distinguished men, the deaths of Trajanus and Sebastianus stood out. With them fell thirty-five tribunes, without special assignments, and leaders of bodies of troops,[*](On numeri, see xiv. 7, 19; on vacantes, Introd., Vol. I, p. xliv.) as well as Valerianus and Aequitius, the one having charge of the stables, the other, of the Palace. Among these also Potentius lost his life in the first flower of his youth; he was tribune of the promoti,[*](See xv. 4, 10, note 3, and Index II, Vol. I.) respected by all good men and honoured both for his own services and those of his father Ursicinus, formerly a commander-in-chief. Certain

The annals record no such massacre of a battle except the one at Cannae, although the Romans more than once, deceived by trickery due to an adverse breeze of Fortune, yielded for a time to illsuccess in their wars, and although the storied dirges of the Greeks have mourned over many a contest.